Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ ¶ Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee; I am God, even thy God.

⁸ I will not reprove thee regarding thy sacrifices; thy burnt offerings are continually before me.

⁹ I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.

¹⁰ For every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

¹¹ I know all the fowls of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are with me.

¹² If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fullness thereof.

¹³ Must I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴ Sacrifice praise unto God and pay thy vows unto the most High

¹⁵ and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

Zain

⁷ Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction and of her rebellions and of all her desirable things that she had in the times of old when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and no one helped her; the enemies saw her and mocked at her days of rest.

Cheth

⁸ Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she is removed; all that honoured her despise her because they have seen her nakedness; yea, she sighs and is turned backward.

Teth

⁹ Her filthiness is in her skirts; she did not remember her latter end; therefore she came down surprisingly; she has no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.

Jod

¹⁰ The enemy has spread out his hand upon all her precious things, and she saw the Gentiles enter into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.

Caph

¹¹ All her people sought their bread with sadness; they have given all their precious things for food to maintain life; see, O LORD, and consider, for I am become vile.

¹⁷ These are wells without water, clouds that are brought by a whirlwind, to whom gross darkness is reserved for ever.

¹⁸ For speaking arrogant words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from those who converse in error,

¹⁹ promising them liberty, being they themselves the slaves of corruption: for he who is overcome by someone is subject to bondage by the one that overcame him.

²⁰ Certainly, if having separated themselves from the contaminations of the world, by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they again entangle themselves therein and are overcome, their latter end is made worse for them than the beginnings.

²¹ For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

²² But it has happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog returns unto his own vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.